And the Winner is...

It’s better than American Idol: the singing is superior; you don’t have to put up with a snarky Simon, a ditzy Paula, and noone gets called “dawg”; there are no commercials; the audience still gets to vote; and there are snacks! It was the Connecticut Opera guild’s 54^th Annual Young Artist Scholarship Competition where twenty-nine young singers competed for fifteen different awards totaling $28,500.

The most surprising performance of the afternoon was definitely David Korn, male soprano. I had never heard a male soprano before and it was rather disconcerting at first. But the initial shock gave way to an appreciation of wonderful technique and command. The judges agreed bestowing upon him the Zieman Award. I’m sure every mezzo-soprano would like to put him in his place - especially after he sang Cherubino – but they’ll just have to learn to live with the extra competition.

The day, however, belonged to soprano Rachele Gilmore. She began with an aria from Daughter of the Regiment which was followed up by the judges’ request of an aria from Donizetti’s Linda di Chamounix. She was dynamite, winning both the grand prize awarded by the judges and the People’s Choice award, voted on by the audience. For those of you who missed her, or for those of you who were left wanting more, you are in luck. Rachele will be singing Zerlina in Connecticut Opera’s Don Giovanni, which kicks off next season. (Insert commercial here to subscribe today! Call me at 860.527.0713 for your tickets!)

It is always interesting to see who the judges give awards to and how they rank them. For the most part, I agreed with award recipients (although one of my favorites, bass Eui Jin Kim, who was very animated and entertaining with a nice full sound, did not) it tends to be the order that I think most people would disagree with. While “easy” may not be quite right to describe the choices for the top one or two prizes, the top singers will tend to separate themselves from the rest. Rachele and Elizabeth Baldwin, winner of the second prize, certainly did that at the competition. Of course, as in a professional football or baseball game, on a different day, the results could have been much different.

The difficulty is weighing the rest of the field. Let’s face it, this isn’t the Gong Show; these are all highly trained and talented singers. How do you compare Kelli Butler, who, to my surprise, followed up an aria from Rigoletto with a stunningly clean version of the Queen of the Night aria, with Katrina Thurman’s Rake’s Progress and Rosenkavalier? (Speaking of Rake’s Progress, is there some sort of Stravinsky centennial that I missed? Every other aria seemed to be from Rake’s.) At least they were of the same voice type. How do you compare mezzo Brandy Lynn Hawkins, an absolute revelation and winner of the June Miller Rosenblatt Award, with tenor JinHwan Byun, winner of the D’Esopo Award. The judges, who certainly have much greater knowledge of opera than I do (I kept having to lean over to Linda and ask, “What is this aria from?”) and know how they should sound. Even then, there is a lot of latitude – just look at the comments on You Tube when you look up videos of Natalie Dessay or Maria Callas. Everyone has an opinion on what the definitive approach is to every aria. When you get judges together to reach some sort of consensus there is bound to be some compromises and horse trading – there probably aren’t any “aha” moments a la Nine Angry Men.

With all that said, here is the link to the complete list of winners.

Things we Learned at Inside the Opera Studio - Abduction from the Seraglio Edition

1. Man, this is one good looking cast!
2. Chris Devlin (Assistant conductor and moderator for the evening) believes that Mozart had it out for the singers as shown by the difficulty of this piece.
3. Matthew Garrett (Belmonte) has a pet peeve about operatic stereotypes – especially the one about strange facial hair.
4. Heather Buck (Constanza) would sing upside down if a director asked her to and it didn’t compromise the aria.
5. Ellen Douglas Schlaffer (Director) has directed so many Connecticut Opera performances over the years she is going to apply for honorary Hartford citizenship.
6. Ashley Howard Wilkinson (Osmin) believes in physical fitness (which may be the understatement of the year – come to see the show and you’ll see why).
7. Sarah Callinan (Blonda) will have no trouble doing a 2:00pm matinee. In fact, if it were at 10:00am it would still be two hours later than many of the performances she had to do as a Resident Artist with Connecticut Opera.
8. Maestro Waters is using his Abduction conducting, both here and when he was in Boston last month, as aerobic training for the marathon Porgy & Bess run that he will be conducting in Berlin this summer.
9. Michael-Paul Krubitzer (Pedrillo) will have to remember to sing the correct words for Abduction since the children’s opera, The Billy Goats Gruff, which he sang as part of Connecticut Opera’s education and outreach program, is based on Mozart’s music.
10. Christopher Dickerson (Pasha Selim) loves coming to Hartford. Since this is a speaking part he gets to play golf and go to the pub without feeling guilty.
11. Did I mention that this is one good looking cast!

Audra McDonald Calls Out CT Opera Chorister

I had the pleasure of attending the Audra McDonald concert at the Jorgensen Center on the campus of UConn on Saturday evening. I was pleased to see that sharing the experience with me were several members of the Connecticut Opera chorus. Ms. McDonald was wonderful, covering a wide range of Broadway favorites and obscurities from the 1920’s to the present day. One of the songs she performed was I Could Have Danced All Night; a song which she said she was reluctant to put in her repertoire since everyone sings it – “From Julie Andrews to Nathan Lane in drag!” After the first refrain, Ms. McDonald remarked, “See, everyone sings it. You’re humming along with it now!” She then turned it into a sing-along with a special exhortation to all the sopranos.

After the song was over, she walked to the lip of the stage, shaded her eyes so she could see into the crowd and remarked, “You were all great especially this one over there,” and she proceeded to point out Connecticut Opera Chorus’ own Kalia Kellogg out of the crowd of several hundred people. After some questions from the stage (‘Are you an opera singer” – “Yes”; “Are you a Fiordiligi? What’s your favorite role?” – “Violetta.”) Ms. McDonald remarked, “You have a beautiful voice,” then jokingly added, “Stay down there in the audience.”

You can take the advice of Audra McDonald and come hear Kalia’s beautiful voice when she sings in the chorus of our upcoming Abduction from the Seraglio.